In order to be suitable for being immersed, sometimes at great depth, the circuits of such electrical equipment are enclosed in watertight housings designed to withstand high external pressure without major deformation; this applies in particular to the housings enclosing the electronic and/or electro-optical circuits of repeaters.
Electrically powered equipment generates heat in operation and this raises the temperature inside the housings. If a large amount of heat is produced in operation, it becomes necessary to provide heat dissipating means in order to avoid overheating the components of the equipment enclosed in the housing.
A housing provided with such means is described, for example, in United Kingdom patent number GB 2,139,859, and it comprises a rigid metal tubular vessel which is a good conductor of heat and which is arranged and dimensioned so as to be suitable for containing the circuits constituting a repeater internally.
The circuits are distributed therein in compartments in the form of 120.degree. cylindrical sectors which build up to form a cylinder inside the tubular vessel. The inside diameter of the vessel is slightly larger than the diameter of the cylinder built up from the compartments, thereby leaving clearance for the deformation which may be caused by the pressure due to immersion.
The compartments are urged apart from one another by interposed springs, thereby urging them indirectly against the inside wall of the tubular vessel.
This arrangement suffers from the drawback of transmitting heat to the tubular vessel via areas of contact between the shaped surfaces of the compartments and of the vessel, which surfaces should fit one another accurately, whereas the vessel is liable to be deformed by the pressure of the fluid in which the housing is immersed, when immersed at depth.
This is made worse by the fact that the system of intermediate springs does not necessarily give rise to uniform distribution of clearance and can sometimes give rise to misalignments.
Further, in order to be accessible, the heat-producing circuits are mounted in cavities which open towards the outside of the cylinder delimited by the assembled compartments, thereby limiting the contact area between the compartments and the inside wall of the tubular vessel to zones situated around said cavities.
The invention therefore proposes a housing of the tubular type having a large cooling capacity, having little sensitivity to variations in pressure, which is simple in design and to assemble, and which is suitable for submersible equipment including electrical circuits that give off a large amount of heat in operation, which heat is dissipated to the outside via the tubular vessel of the housing.